Illinois Executive Mansion racks up $100k annual utilities bill

During his budget speech in February, Gov. Bruce Rauner decided to use himself to drive home a point about fiscal responsibility.

He said taxpayers expect state officials to be good fiscal stewards who will be accountable for how tax dollars get spent. He contended some state bills get paid automatically with little or no thought about containing costs.

“When my wife and I moved into the Governor’s Mansion in 2015, we noticed that every light was turned on,” Rauner said. “I don’t know about you, but I was raised that if you left a room and didn’t shut out the lights, you’d be in trouble.”

“Of course, this led us to ask what the utility bill was for the mansion,” Rauner continued. “It took two weeks to track down who actually got the bill in the government bureaucracy and to discover that it cost the state almost $100,000 a year. Outrageous. We immediately put in good energy management practices to cut the bill substantially.”

The Executive Mansion is not exactly a worker’s cottage. It is one of the oldest official residences in the country and at 48,000 square feet, is not tiny. But even with an outsized building like the mansion, Rauner’s claims of enormous utility bills drew some skepticism.

In fact, records show Rauner slightly understated the cost of providing power, heat and water to the mansion. Utility costs at the mansion were more than $100,000 as the Rauners were taking up residence there.

Rauner was elected in 2014 and took the oath of office in January 2015. That means the Rauners took up residence in the mansion midway through the state’s 2015 fiscal year. Illinois fiscal years run from July 1 to the following June 30.

Figures provided by the administration show total utility costs in the 2014 fiscal year were $108,341. That included $63,723 for electricity, $32,608 for natural gas and $12,010 for water.

City Water, Light and Power lists five accounts for the Executive Mansion. The largest is for electricity supplied to the building. CWLP also has an account for water, sewer and sanitary services. There is a separate account for water used for irrigation at the mansion. CWLP spokeswoman Amber Sabin said that “customers can have separate meters for irrigation or other outdoor water use and have that consumption exclude some of the sewer or sanitary discharges that apply to other water consumption.”

Finally, there are two fire lines that serve the property. One costs about $400 annually and the other about $700.

CWLP maintains records on a calendar year basis, rather than a state fiscal year. Its records show that in calendar 2014, the utility billed the state $73,477 for the accounts. CWLP does not provide natural gas to the mansion.

In calendar 2015, CWLP’s billing jumped to $77,879 because of a 45,000 kilowatt hour increase in electrical use at the mansion. The following year those costs rose to $83,580, even though electricity use dropped significantly, to about the same level that it was in 2014.

Rauner spokeswoman Rachel Bold said that the size of the building obviously plays into the size of the utility bills for it. She said another factor is the building is used for a number of public events which adds to utility costs that would not be part of an ordinary home.

Bold said steps have been taken to reduce costs, from simple things like turning off lights that aren’t needed and lowering the heat when the building isn’t occupied to installation of energy saving LED lights.

Proving the effectiveness of those measures is a little more difficult and just because of the fluctuations any homeowner will see in utility bills. The Rauner’s moved out in April 2017 while the mansion undergoes extensive renovations. Verifying the expenses through state payment records is complicated because utility payments were often delayed during the budget impasse and then accelerated when money became available.

Bold, though, provided records for utility bills — for electricity, water, natural gas and sewer charges — from March 2014 and March of 2017. In March of 2014, utility bills ran $7,590. In 2017, those charges were $5,798.

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